• ISBN13: 9780198827689
• Binding: Hardcover
• Subject: English Literature
• Publisher: Oxford UP
• Publisher Imprint: Oxford UP
• Publication Date: April 16, 2019
• Pages: 288
• Original Price: 750.0 INR
• Language: English
• Edition: N/A
• Item Weight: 360 grams

Ian McEwan once said, 'When women stop reading, the novel will be dead.' This book explains how precious fiction is to contemporary women readers, and how they draw on it to tell the stories of their lives. Female readers are key to the future of fiction and―as parents, teachers, and librarians―the glue for a literate society. Women treasure the chance to read alone, but have also gregariously shared reading experiences and memories with mothers, daughters, grandchildren, and female friends. For so many, reading novels and short stories enables them to escape and to spread their wings intellectually and emotionally.

Helen Taylor is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Exeter, Honorary Fellow of the British Association of American Studies, and Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow 2016-18. She has taught English and American literature at the universities of the West of England, Bristol, Warwick, and Exeter, where she was Head of the School of English. A specialist in literature and culture of the American South and women's writing, she has published widely in both areas. Her books include Scarlett's Women: Gone With the Wind and its Female Fans em, (1989, reprinted 2014), Circling Dixie: Contemporary Southern Culture through a Transatlantic Lens em, (2001), and The Daphne du Maurier Companion em, (2007), as well as a BFI Film Classic on Gone With the Wind em, (2015). Curator, Chair, and participant in many literature festivals, she was the first Director of the Liverpool Literary Festival, 2016 and 2018.